This study extends framing theory by identifying two causal mechanisms and one contingent condition for a new type of frame to be used with issues where people dispute scientific claims. This new “adaptive frame” focuses on adapting to climate change impacts without cueing deeply held beliefs by discussing causes. An experiment shows this frame works by reducing persuasion knowledge and increasing perceived behavioral control, resulting in science skeptics being significantly more likely to intend to take action, engage with the news, and agree with the story’s perspective. This effect is moderated by science skepticism, with adaptive frames working significantly better on the very people the news media are not reaching. We contribute to theory with an understanding of how a frame that eliminates references to deep-seated beliefs is more effective than the existing frames of conflict, attribution of responsibility, and possibly others.

This probability sampled content analysis of 1159 televised shots examined the TV news media's visual representation of the candidates in the 2000 presidential election. The purpose was to see whether it conveyed nonverbal messages that helped or hindered the candidates. Two dimensions of visual communication that convey affective information were examined—the facial expressions, appearance, and nonverbal behavior of the candidates, and the structural features of television edited into news stories by journalists such as camera angle, distance, and movement. Overall, we found fairly balanced coverage of the two candidates in the visuals that are under the control of journalists. There was not a consistent liberal bias or incumbent bias; in fact, there was slightly more evidence of the visuals favoring the Republican rather than the Democrat. There were significantly more stories about the Republicans, significantly more visual shots of Bush than of Gore, and the number of shots of Bush in the second half of the newscasts. The only indication of bias for the Democrats was the significantly greater number of shots of the Democrat running mate. There was no evidence of systematic bias of any kind in the structural features such as camera angle, distance, and motion.

Health communication is increasingly being held to higher moral standards. No longer do noble goals outweigh ethical concerns. This content analysis examines ethical frames and primes in health public service announcements (PSAs) so we may begin to address the most prevalent of the problematic ones and find more ethical alternatives. In this study, 80% of the PSAs conveyed messages that individuals were to blame. Negative emotion, such as fear, was the second most frequent frame. Stereotypes of women were the primes most prevalent in the visuals, and visual and verbal messages were vastly different for some of these primes. The ethical implications of each are addressed.

Journalists have been shown to be highly capable of making good moral decisions, but they do not always act as ethically as studies show them to be able. Using the Reasoned Action Model, this study explores the gap between moral motivation and moral behavior and tests the proposition that different social norms can help predict how journalists behave across three ethical and three unethical behaviors (N=374). The study found that descriptive norms predicted ethical behaviors and that injunctive norms predicted unethical behaviors. Descriptive norms also accounted for more variance in journalists’ ethical behavior (48%) than injunctive norms did on unethical behavior (28%). The findings advance the Four-Component Model in significantly improving moral behavior predictability and offer a new way to assess journalists’ moral reasoning.

Much is known about how individual differences such as age and education affect the news media’s ability to transfer its agenda of issues to the public, but little is known about them at the affective level of agenda setting. Evidence shows individual differences may work differently with affect, thus this study examined demographics that predict adopting the news media’s affective agenda. Using data from the U.S. Presidential campaigns in 2008, 2012 and 2016, it found that, indeed, demographics do not all work the same for affect as issues. Unlike with issue agenda setting, education showed no effect at all, while the young were more likely to adopt the news media’s affective agenda than older age groups. As expected, Democrats and Republicans were more likely to adopt the news media’s affective agenda of their own candidates, but Independents were not. As with first-level agenda setting, there was no effect of gender.

Widespread concerns about the pervasiveness of misinformation have propelled one antidote to the center of scholarly attention: the journalistic fact check. Yet, fact checks often do not work as intended. While most fact checks are text only, a compelling theoretical argument can be made for using a video format instead. In this pre-registered experiment conducted in Germany ( N = 1,093), we investigated whether using video versus text can improve fact checks’ ability to correct misperceptions about transgender women, cannabis consumption, migration, and climate change. Video fact checks outperformed text fact checks, with those holding false or uncertain pre-existing beliefs benefiting the most. We contribute to motivated reasoning theory the idea that visual information can override directional reasoning better than textual information, and that processing fluency is the mechanism by which this occurs. Our findings paint an optimistic picture for the ability of fact checks to debunk misinformation, especially for those holding misperceptions.